Status report highlights Partnership’s progress

The Partnership is pleased to releaseDelivering on Our Commitments: 2012 Targets Status Report, which charts the organization’s progress on performance targets for initiatives across the priority areas of Canada’s cancer control strategy. The document illustrates the achievements made by taking a co-ordinated and national approach to cancer control.

The Partnership has been privileged to implement, in collaboration with its partners, a national cancer strategy to reduce the impact of the disease on Canadians. The terms of that strategy were defined by the collective vision, and more than a decade of work, of over 700 cancer practitioners and survivors from coast to coast. The strategy targeted pan-Canadian, system-level change with a patient and survivor focus and included initiatives to advance investment in priority areas. When the Partnership began, the organization defined desired outcomes for each initiative and set 55 performance targets to achieve within its first five years.

Delivering on Our Commitments: 2012 Targets Status Report provides details on the 55 targets. The report indicates that by the end of the Partnership’s initial mandate in March 2012, 51 of the targets will be fully achieved, with some exceeding their 2012 goals and demonstrating early evidence of impact. Other report highlights include the following:

Significant gains have been made across the Partnership’s six priority initiatives, which received special emphasis in the first mandate because of their potential for concrete results in the short term that would lead to better decisions, care and outcomes for Canadians. These initiatives are Coalitions Linking Action and Science for Prevention (CLASP), Colorectal Cancer Screening, the National Staging Initiative, System Performance Reporting, cancerview.ca, and First Nations, Inuit and Métis Cancer Control.

Co-ordinated efforts, facilitated by the Partnership, to improve culturally relevant and people-specific cancer control initiatives are also gaining momentum. A people-specific and culturally responsive First Nations, Inuit and Métis Cancer Control Action Plan, supported by national Aboriginal organizations, is in place to enhance cancer control with and for First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.

Work continues on two targets that have been partially achieved for the Partnership’s largest and most complex multi-jurisdictional initiatives — the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow Project and the National Staging Initiative.

As implementation of the Cervical Cancer Screening and Health Human Resources initiatives progressed, the implementation evolved for each, which resulted in their initial targets being out of scope.

As the Partnership completes its first five-year mandate in March 2012 and prepares for the sixth year of its term, the report demonstrates the successes that can be achieved through collaboration.